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The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

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Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#131

Post by xivzgrev »

Ok honest question fellow comment reader - what are you going to do about it? This is the 5th or 6th article I’ve seen on this transaction, with hundreds of comments each.

Ethos Capital does not give 2 shits about your comments here.

Are you writing to the DA like this article suggested? What else can you do?

Myself, I don’t personally care that much. But I see a lot of people here obviously do, and I don’t really see that energy translating into action. I would like to see it move forward in a positive direction, so I’m asking the question of you - you don’t like it, what are you going to do about it besides complain here?

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#132

Post by zrm »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #124
leibnitz27 wrote: post #118

I bought an org domain back in the 90s, and have been using it as my personal domain (i.e. also primary email address) ever since. While, granted, I was perhaps a little silly to go org (it seemed like a good idea back then!), it's mildly terrifying that my personal footprint on the web of 20+ years can now be held to ransom by a random VC firm, and to keep my own email address I might have to pay an additional $$$ a…

Extend your domain lease by 10 years at the current yearly fee. Gives you some time to migrate if you choose to.

That's a bad deal unless you actually need ten years to migrate, which you probably don't. Better off to take a year or three at the 10% annual increase and then stop paying entirely (~364% of the existing rate for three years, with payments made in the future rather than the present) than to pay 1000% of the existing rate right now.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#133

Post by gowld »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #60
cameldrv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest. The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest. ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for regi…

Further, the sale of the asset to a third party is essentially laundering the extraction of maximum value. The buyer pays the NPV when operated as a profit focused enterprise, then insulates the ISOC from blowback when it actually does this. The ISOC can then turn around and feign betrayal with the rest of us, its pockets full of money.

"laundering" is the fundamental purpose of incorporation. The various forms of corporations are various ways to detach responsibilities normally required of natural persons.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#135

Post by bryanrasmussen »

MrEldritch wrote: post #117
ohashi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the internet. We don't forget things like this. People's names have been attached to it, like Andrew Sullivan (CEO) and Richard Barnes (board member defending it). We know exactly who fucked over everyone here, they admit it publicly. There's no pretending about it, Andrew was more than happy to sell out the non profit space. Just read the interview: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/isoc_ceo_dot_org_s…

This is the Internet. Everyone will have forgotten this besides, like, five people before this time 2020.

This is Hacker News, pretty much everyone will have forgotten about this relatively soon but whenever anything even remotely related to the event is posted about one of the people who has not forgotten will say about how they are still annoyed with X and that X is immoral, which will then cause someone to say what is wrong with X, and then someone else will go into excruciating detail on what is wrong with X and lots of people will chime in to say they hate X too.

Which I think is pretty much things working as intended. And as a result, no they won't exactly be remembered forever but they don't get to go down the memory hole either.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#136

Post by gowld »

wpietri wrote: post #129
cameldrv wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest. The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest. ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for regi…

Break-even pricing was my first thought, too. But I think the .org registry has to be priced at least modestly higher than business-y domains (e.g., .com), because otherwise you'll find people using it for all sorts of for-profit stuff, reducing its signalling value. But there's no reason that money can't go right back into basic infrastructure. For example, after the Heartbleed bug we learned that OpenSSL was receiv…

Why does "signalling value" matter at all? If a business gets value by masquerading as an "org", then that value is sure worth more than $10 or whatever, and surely the commercial entities are better able to pay than non-profit orgs, so making org cost more only hurts orgs, not businesses.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#137

Post by gowld »

cryptonector wrote: post #84
ohashi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone dug into their expenses, 69% overhead. https://twitter.com/ferdeline/status/1199380702233612288

Do you know what ISOC does? It's a non-profit, yes, but it's not a charity. It exists to make things like the IETF and IRTF, and related administrative groups run. That's it. Of course its expenses are going to be mostly overhead -- what else would they be given their mission?

"mission-related" work is a separate category from "staff travel" aka vacations.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#138

Post by gowld »

deepaksurti wrote: post #76
lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wrote about this too - linked in the article. https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o... The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million/year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m/year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion. As any r/personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a ma…

>> is to spend a maximum of 4% of your assets each year. OT. Isn't 4% also the rule of early retirement, that is if you can live of 4% of your savings you can retire? Can anyone clarify if this rule applies for both individual and corporate? If so, how would be even more interesting to know?

The % is lower for corporations than for humans, because corporations intend to outlive humans.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#139

Post by matthewdgreen »

xivzgrev wrote: post #131

Ok honest question fellow comment reader - what are you going to do about it? This is the 5th or 6th article I’ve seen on this transaction, with hundreds of comments each. Ethos Capital does not give 2 shits about your comments here. Are you writing to the DA like this article suggested? What else can you do? Myself, I don’t personally care that much. But I see a lot of people here obviously do, and I don’t really se…

The DA (and others) are a lot more likely to care about this if it gains press attention — preferably national and preferably well beyond the HN audience. Keep sending those emails to the DA, by all means. But if anything happens to this deal, it’s going to be 100% driven by press attention.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#140

Post by logfromblammo »

deepaksurti wrote: post #76
lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wrote about this too - linked in the article. https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o... The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million/year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m/year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion. As any r/personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a ma…

>> is to spend a maximum of 4% of your assets each year. OT. Isn't 4% also the rule of early retirement, that is if you can live of 4% of your savings you can retire? Can anyone clarify if this rule applies for both individual and corporate? If so, how would be even more interesting to know?

4% works out for retirement, with the expectation that you will eventually die and no longer need the income. The assumption there is that if the market underperforms for the next 35 years in a row, you run out of money just after you die.

An immortal, such as a corporation, has to use a safer number, such as 3%, or 2.5% for operations and 0.5% in fees for the fiduciary management. So the permanent endowment needs to be 40x annual operating costs, and the fiduciary needs to grow it by 3% better than (price) inflation per year. That's relatively easy to do when most of the principal won't be touched within the next 30 years: buy all the publicly-traded stocks that have historically paid regular dividends, and reinvest whatever isn't paid out. On a long enough time scale, that's probably 7% better than inflation.

So the fiduciary could possibly be replaced by a robot that only needs 0.05% annually for maintenance, and then you'd only need to endow 34x annual operating costs to run forever.

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